Men being hurt by women is not an excuse for men to hurt women in return. It is possible for both groups to acknowledge they’ve been hurt by each other and work toward a solution. Pushing “they hurt me so they deserve to be hurt” helps nobody, especially when both groups are doing it.
That’s what I’m complaining about. This mindset that being hurt by men/women completely absolves you of the responsibility to allow them to feel safe. Any space dominated by women will be filled with “Well men are responsible for the majority of violence and sexual assault so actually you deserve to feel like shit.” every time a man speaks up. Any space dominated by men will be filled with “Well it makes me feel bad when you discuss the repercussions of your trauma so shut the fuck up.” every time a woman speaks up.
We can have a place where both genders can talk freely about the way these things effect them and the changes we need to make to fix them. The issue is people are only pretending to want such a space. What they really want is the other gender to sit down, shut up, and agree with them uncritically. Because in their head they’re definitely in the right and they’d rather not be confronted with alternate viewpoints from people who have lived experiences they’ll never have.

Worse, as a trans woman, you’d think people would be more willing to accept our viewpoints because trans people are some of few people who can have both lived experiences. But no, our experiences are only valid if they 100% allign with the men or women we share them with. Otherwise we’re brushed off like somehow our experience doesn’t count because we had the wrong experience to reaffirm their biases.
On Lemmy, dominated by men, when I say I fear women due to my lived childhood experience as a boy, being taken advantage of while I was still too young to fight back, I’m met with outpourings of support. People talk about why “this is why trans people’s life experience matters.” When I mention later in the same conversation that I also fear men due to my lived experience as a woman and not being able to fight back due the the hormonal muscle loss, suddenly, my experiences don’t count anymore. People think they get to pick and choose which of my experiences were valid and valuable and which aren’t based on whatever reaffirms what they already believe. And of course you can bet the exact same thing happens the other way around when I tell the same story to women.

But what’s going on here isn’t something within the control of most people. When you’re abused by somebody you don’t choose to fear those people, you fear them because that’s what your brain is wired to do to avoid repeated trauma. Like I said, therapy is the solution, but only part of the solution. The other part is fixing the issue causing the trauma in the first place. Men aren’t being victimized by the women who fear them, they’re being victimized by the other men who caused that fear.
And I want to be clear, because I’ve realized at this point that this isn’t obvious anymore in today’s world, fear is not an excuse for misandry. At the same time, fear of men is not misandry. Somebody saying they’d rather pick the bear should be met with “oh, we should fix the issue causing them to fear men more than bears,” not “oh, they should fear bears more.”
I also want to be clear that this isn’t even a gendered issue despite the fact that it’s been made into one. A man who’s been abused by women and would rather pick the bear should also be met with compassion and “how can we reduce the number of female abusers?” I’ve actually been abused by women too. In fact, more often than I have men. I want to be clear that even though this discussion has been about men specifically, I feel the exact same way about women. That we still need to be compassionate to their victims and accept that the people who traumatized them are the problem, not their trauma.
Fearing somebody is not an action you perform, it’s a state you’re in.

How about you miss the entire point and get aggressive for no reason?
Seriously, what kind of response to “I’ve been traumatized by men” is “you should traumatized by bears too?”

IRL, sure, but on Lemmy that’s not what’s happening. If you talk about trauma at the hands of women on Lemmy, you get outpourings of support and people sharing their experiences as well. Which is good. That should be happening everywhere.
The problem is you can’t do the same thing on Lemmy if you were traumatized by men. Instead, you get down voted to hell, get statistics quoted at you as if that’ll magically fix it, and when surprise, still traumatized after the stats, now you must be a misandrist so your trauma is invalid anyway.

I was just hoping one place would exist on the internet where men’s and women’s issues could get equal screen time and be respected just as much, but no, the genders have to be treated like sports teams and if you support one apparently you have to hate the other. I just don’t get why people are like this.

You’re free to disagree, but for me and many others, I’ve been through both, and I’m definitely waaaay more scared of being sexually assaulted again than being beaten half to death again. They have very different effects on your psyche. Physical violence I react far more with anger than fear, even if I was terrified in the moment. When it looks like it’s happening again, my brain says “Fight back.” When I’m afraid of sexual trauma being relived, my brain says “Escape, now. Can’t escape? Submit. Maybe that way they won’t kill you too at least.”

I agree. I never said it was a good mindset. Therapy is definitely something we need to learn to deal with this and think logically. The issue is so absurdly many women have been traumatized by men that the mental health support systems would be so overloaded that it’s just a fact that only a miniscule fraction of women would ever be able to receive help, even if we had absolutely perfect support systems.

So the only solution is to prevent them from getting traumatized in the first place. But the entirety of Lemmy seems really resistant to that conversation. Would rather quote statistics about “oh the average man isn’t likely to assault you” than to accept that the ones who do are dealing enough damage that the problem needs to be dealt with regardless of what the average man is doing.

There’s a serious difference in the level of trauma between these examples, and the level of exposure to the dangers of the counter. Sexual trauma is a hell of a lot more scarring on your psyche than simply being beaten. In addition, at least in the US we’re exposed to gun violence every day as opposed to basically never for bear attacks. Even in other countries with better gun control, you’re dramatically more likely to hear about somebody being shot than you are to hear about somebody being mauled by a bear. Not only that, but it’s really easy to process “get shot, you’re dead.” It’s not as easy to make yourself believe you’re definitely gonna be killed by an animal that has whole guides written on how to survive them.
Those two things combined make your example far from comparable. In addition, I’m not saying in any way that the fear is justified nor that no attempt should be made to fix it, what I’m trying to point out us that people don’t realize how intense a fear it really is when they get offended at people making this choice.

Obviously, therapy is important to learning how to handle that fear and think more logically, but if every woman who needs it sought therapy for this, there just aren’t enough therapists in the entire world to handle the load. Not even close. So a bigger part of the solution is, y’know, making sure women aren’t getting traumatized in the first place. But everybody here wants to skip that part for some reason.

I’ve never been downvoted anywhere for expressing that opinion. Lemmy especially there’s a huge disparity where saying you’d rather be with a bear than a man is unacceptable, but saying you’d rather be with a bear than a woman? A-okay. Source? I’ve said both. Only one was I not attacked for. Guess which?
Seriously, I’ve expressed my trauma regarding men countless times and every time been attacked for it. I’ve expressed my trauma at the hands of women and not a single downvote or attack or disparaging remark any time. Lemmy has a very clear bias.
I wouldn’t have a single problem with men getting upset about this bear thing if they got equally upset when somebody says something similar or worse about women, but they don’t.

As a trans woman who has also been sexually assaulted, it has more to do for me with what danger is more real to me. I’ve experienced zero bear attacks. Nobody I know has experienced a bear attack. Why would I fear one? Of course, consciously yeah, I know a bear is dangerous, but I have no real world experience to back that assumption up.
Men though? Yeah, I’ve been sexually assaulted by men. I’ve been physically assaulted by men. I’ve had family and friends who’ve been physically and sexually assaulted by men. That danger is real to me. I know that if a man I don’t know is nearby me he could do those things to me, and I have the real world experience to prove that assumption correct (the assumption that they could, not the assumption that they would.)
Therefore, of course I’m more scared of the man than the bear. And of course I’d choose the bear over the man. I don’t care if it’s the wrong choice, I’ll take my chances to not have to relive that trauma, even if it means risking my life. Not like I’ll have time to regret that decision if the bear decides to kill me. Probably. And most women I know when asked expressed the same sentiment in different words. We’re more scared of men than bears, but that doesn’t mean we literally think men are more dangerous than bears.
Is it the logical choice to pick the bear? Probably not, but humans are not logical creatures. I’d rather make the wrong choice than the scary choice.