So some woman are afraid of me because of my job....

[Phasmal]

Snip.

I think you missed the part where I wrote I was using the word `you` in a general sense, not to mean you the person who wrote it.

Not zealous, just tired of important issues being dismissed.

 

[McMullen]

Snip.

I think you missed the part where I wrote I was using the word `you` in a general sense, not to mean you the person who wrote it.

Not zealous, just tired of important issues being dismissed.

Looks like I did miss it... Except that I always quote posts directly from the thread, and I didn't delete anything out of it, which means that you added that edit AFTER I made my reply. Honest mistake... except hold on, what's this?

Snip.

I think you missed the part where I wrote I was using the word `you` in a general sense, not to mean you the person who wrote it.

I missed the part that didn't exist yet?

Retroactively editing your quoted post to pretend that you said things that you didn't isn't any classier than using straw man arguments. You're just digging yourself deeper. Your "side" is in the right. Rape is vile, the myths that men tell themselves about it are ridiculous, and anyone paying attention should be able to see it.

So why are you using dishonest means to argue for your cause? You don't need to.

EDIT: Or are you just trying to make yourself look better?

 

[Harpalyce]

Unfortunately there's no easy fix. If you want to help change things, look beyond the superficial and focus on the real problem. Don't give in to the temptation to say "what bitches they are for being scared of me", realize that society is constantly yelling at women to be paranoid about this shit

They also 'tell me' I'm supposed to be found in the gym at least six days a week, be totally dumb, be afraid of having friendships with men too openly making you gay, pop steroids and never turn down any sexual proposal from any woman and consider them my personal property after I accept.

None of those things bother me though, I don't listen to such nonsense. So why are you assuming women are willess beings unable to resist whatever questionable calls are made on them from culture?

And how come there's some women who don't listen to stereotypes like that? Not every woman assumes a role of constant learned helplessness you know.

We're all shaped by society. Just ask your friendly local anthropologist or sociologist. There's actually several interesting studies about how anorexia is essentially a social disease, the most dramatic of which is a case study of a population in Fiji where the standard of beauty went from zaftig and pleasantly plump to stick-thin and anorexia popped up where it had never been before - and in direct correlation to the amount of western media (especially television) that was introduced into said population.

Nobody's a completely mindless sheep, male or female, but if you're beaten over the head with the same message over and over and over (pink is for girls! blue is for boys! etc) it does leave a lasting impression.

I'm not trying to be all 'boo you're a bad person', I'm mainly trying to point out that it's a shitty situation for everyone involved, and to actually stop said shitty situation, we need to get a little closer to the root cause.

 

[Phasmal]

Snip

Oh for gods sake...
I didnt just edit it.
I wrote that yesterday, I dont know if I can show that, but I dont really care either.
I'm not in the mood to argue over the interwebs with some dude who didnt even read my post correctly in the first place.

 

[ChaoticKraus]

Well i'm not a woman but i definitely have a lot of respect for construction workers and the sort. My dad runs a marketing firm and my mom's a special education teacher but i still grew up with all the blue-collar home kids, heck some of them made far more money than us.

Anyway, nowadays a ton of my friends work in construction or related buisnesses. I even thought about joining them for a while but decided that my hyperactive mind was better suited for walking in my fathers footsteps. You might even have say i have an idealized view of craftsmen and the like, seeing them as honest and down to earth.

Off-Topic: It's funny to see how many people that say that they avoid young men with hoodies given that it is my clothing staple of choice. But i guess i have noticed that people give me a wider berth when wearing my street clothes than they usually do. And shit, if you are walking with a bunch of minority friends people give you more space than they do to cars.

 

[Woodsey]

EDIT:
Seriously??
Do guys actually think like this?
Oh, rape only happens when a woman does something like drink or flirt with some poor guy who wants more. Must be her fault.
Excuse me while I go vomit up my lungs.

Sounds like someone's not had the good fortune of strolling into an Escapist-brand relationship thread once the ball's got rolling. Raise the sails Mr Smee, and set course for Misogyny Island!

 

[MorganL4]

Well Im a guy, but if I see a construction project going on by a street I tend to cross to the other side purely because I don't want to get in the way of the guys doing their jobs.

That said paranoia runs deep. So yes there will be people that will judge you based on your profession, its not right ( especially when you consider the fact that there people probably live in houses, AND SOMEONE HAD TO BUILD THEM).

 

[Isalan]

This made me think of a nice, heartwarming story my Dad e-mailed me a few days ago.

Spoiler: Awwwwwww :)

A young family moved into a house next door to an empty plot. One day, a gang of building workers turned up to start building on the plot.

The young family's 5-year-old daughter naturally took an interest in all the activity going on next door and started talking with the workers.
She hung around and eventually the builders, all with hearts of gold, more or less adopted the little girl as a sort of project mascot. They chatted with her, let her sit with them while they had tea and lunch breaks, and gave her little jobs to do here and there to make her feel important.

They even gave the child her very own hard hat and gloves, which thrilled her immensely.

At the end of the first week, the smiling builders presented her with a pay envelope - containing two pounds in 10p coins. The little girl took her 'pay' home to her mother who suggested that they take the money to the bank the next day to open a savings account.

At the bank, the female cashier was tickled pink listening to the little girl telling her about her 'work' on the building site, and the fact she had a 'pay packet'.

'You must have worked very hard to earn all this', said the cashier.
The little girl proudly replied, 'Yes, I worked every day with Steve and Wayne and Mike. We're building a big house.'

'My goodness gracious,' said the cashier, 'And will you be working on the house again next week?'

The child thought for a moment. Then she said seriously:

'I think so, provided those wankers at Jewsons deliver the fucking bricks.'

OT: I think it is a bit ridiculous, sometimes workmen can look a little intimidating but to actually be afraid of them is a bit much. That said, I'm a fairly big bloke and I can give them a nob and a "Alright mate" as I pass which is usually returned in a friendly manner. Don't get bummed out about it, just smile and nod at the ones that don't cross, in this day and age a smile from a stranger in the street is the sort of thing that makes you feel fuzzy inside.

Can I ask whereabouts you work? If you're in Britain, I think the attitude is different depending on which side of Birmingham you're on.

Brilliant, brilliant story XD

OT: I suppose part of this is to do with the kind of rogue builders you sometimes get. Pikeys turning up and repaving peoples driveways and demanding payment can be common in certain areas and its paints all tradesmen in a bad light. Which is a shame cos I've done a bit of light carpentry with my dad and building is a very noble profession. The feeling of building something with your hands is great, especially when its done and you can stand back and admire it.

 

[XMark]

Try being a programmer - the moment you let that piece of information out, the chances of female attraction drop significantly. (and in my case the chances weren't so high to begin with)

Not many jobs get a good response from the fairer gender. Basically there's just Doctor and Airplane Pilot.

 

[Ryank1908]

Sometimes I cross the road because I don't want to get in the way of the builders, but there is kind of a cult of nervousness around workmen, it seems. I know quite a few people who dislike them because of cultural stereotypes and/or past-experience when it comes to harrassment from builders. I think they then tarnish every man carrying a work-tool around with the same brush.

 

[Dogstile]

No, it is not fair to men to have to deal with women suspecting them of being possible rapists, but rape is too real a threat to not be paranoid.

A vast majority of rape stems from women being retarded (Like getting way too wasted at a bar/club) and not the "Scary man from nowhere stealing you off!"

So no, your excuse is wrong.

You ignorant bastard. You have NO IDEA WHAT THE FUCK YOU ARE TALKING ABOUT.
You have no right to make that claim, and talking like that only goes to belittle the very real horror that it can entail.

Come back to me after your friend is violently raped and murdered in her own lab, just minutes away from where your sister is, or people you care about being violated by their own fathers as children, or overpowered and raped on her college campus by a serial rapist, (As in, a sadistic bastard who attacks random women on the street) only to be treated to the "You were asking for it" bullshit you're flaunting about now, undermining her ability to trust and leaving her with a sense of self doubt that she has had to deal with all her life.

Ah see, that's where you went wrong. Instead of making the valid point that he didn't provide any sources to back up his claim, you instead took his message and twisted it into "every woman who gets raped is asking for it".

No, he didn't say that. He said the vast majority of rape cases are the result of alcohol getting involved. http://www.montana.edu/wwwai/imsd/alcohol/Vanessa/vwrapefactsheet.htm Hey look, source, seems like he's right.

Next time, can you just, I dunno, berate him for being a dick about it, rather than flying off the handle and twisting what he actually said? Makes you seem much more reasonable.

OT: You'll get the short response, i'm getting tired. Carpenters and workmen in general get the bad rep because of the media portraying them as catcalling arseholes. The minority will of course take that and agree with it. Because they're assholes, people remember the minority more. Just how it works.

 

[DarthFennec]

So people of the escapist, especially women. What do you think when you see a builder, or a labourer or tradesman of any other job. Am I just being paranoid for the most part?

... really? People actually do that? That sounds like a pretty ridiculous reaction to have ...

I don't often walk around and when I do I tend not to notice other people ... but when I do notice people, I rarely, if ever, have any opinion of them ... unless of course, they're the people on the bus or in class who I see every day, and in that case I start to develop opinions of them after about two weeks or so. But considering the kinds of things I have noticed, I will say that I'm probably in a minority, and that in general people are going to treat you differently because you're black or female or a construction worker or have an annoying voice or whatever. For some reason, I don't know, I never really understood it.

I once had a pair of prescription glasses, and a similar pair of prescription sunglasses. One day I broke the normal glasses, and I had to wear the sunglasses everywhere until I could get my replacements in. That took a bit longer than I expect it should have, and during that time period everybody looked at me funny and treated me different ... even my instructors and classmates, who had known me the whole semester ... it was pretty bizarre ... The day I got the replacements back on, people started being nice to me again. I don't know, humans don't make any sense.

 

[DarthFennec]

Try being a programmer - the moment you let that piece of information out, the chances of female attraction drop significantly. (and in my case the chances weren't so high to begin with)

Not many jobs get a good response from the fairer gender. Basically there's just Doctor and Airplane Pilot.

There are different women in different places. As a programmer I realized long ago that I'm not going to pick up chicks in a bar or at a party. Try going to a convention, you'll have much better luck there.

 

[thedeathscythe]

I'm a plumber, and the same thing happens to me. They treat me like I'm on hard times working a dead end job, when in reality, I'm making three times minimum wage and that's MY minimum wage as a plumber. It's ironic, that tradeswork jobs are in such demand so the wages just go up and up and we make a lot more than people think we do, and way more than those same people themselves make.

Keep at it, don't let them bother you. I have a lot of tattoos and people look at me like a criminal sometimes in my work clothes (and, in regular clothes...haha), but it doesn't matter what people think, you have a job that is in such demand that you'll never go hungry and when you one day go on your own (like I want to), you can charge people an arm and a leg simply because not enough people do what you do.

 

[kaizen2468]

Depends on the woman man. I'm an electrician and my girlfriend absolutely loves it when I come home in my work clothes She goes nuts if I'm still wearing my cover-alls, with some tools in the pouches.

 

[Fieldy409_v1legacy]

I'm a plumber, and the same thing happens to me. They treat me like I'm on hard times working a dead end job, when in reality, I'm making three times minimum wage and that's MY minimum wage as a plumber. It's ironic, that tradeswork jobs are in such demand so the wages just go up and up and we make a lot more than people think we do, and way more than those same people themselves make.

Keep at it, don't let them bother you. I have a lot of tattoos and people look at me like a criminal sometimes in my work clothes (and, in regular clothes...haha), but it doesn't matter what people think, you have a job that is in such demand that you'll never go hungry and when you one day go on your own (like I want to), you can charge people an arm and a leg simply because not enough people do what you do.

Hell yeah. Being a contractors where the big moneys at.

Though I'd like at least 10 years experience under my belt first I think.

 

[Awsomeotaku]

I'm a "young lady" and I don't really think anything of construction workers (I say this in a broad way) mainly because I love building stuff myself. When I say that I don't mean brick-laying, I mean helping build the sets in theatre (like walkways, bridges, or ramps). Even if I didn't do that I am very down to earth in the way I like to treat people.

 

[Fishyash]

Weird coincidence this is.

Earlier on today I went out of my way to walk around a group of builders who were working on a house. I don't think it has anything to do with women though, except maybe the catcall stereotype.

I dunno, I just hate the idea of getting in the way of someone with a profession like a carpenter or builder. People with those kind of professions anyways.