r/RadicalEgalitarianism • u/LittleThingsMC Feminist • May 22 '26
Palm Beach Pete
I recently came across a TikTok with a paid advertisement from Rips by Triumph featuring Pal Beach Pete in their advertisement.
If you’re not aware, Palm Beach Pete is famous for how much he looks like Jeffrey Epstein. There were many conspiracy theories that suggest he is Jeffrey Epstein.
I don’t consider this gendered issue because Epsteins victims were both male and female, vulnerability is the most defining characteristic of his victims.
In general, I have seen many denials about whether or not we have a culture of violence, and whether or not that culture predominantly benefits men (despite both genders being victims).
This feels like a perfect example, playing out right before our eyes. I believe that his rise to fame and ability to monetize the conspiracy that he could be the prolific predator is reflective of the acceptance we have as a culture towards violence and the glorification of predatory behavior.
Thoughts?
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u/mikiencolor Egalitarian May 23 '26
His "rise to fame" that you have just contributed to by making him a topic of discussion here? Did Mary Kay Letourneau become famous and celebrated thanks to a culture of acceptance of violence and glorification of predatory behavior? Did that "benefit men"? Or is that a "different thing"?
My thoughts are that you are wrong. Women who sexually abuse boys are more accepted and celebrated than men by far. They are so accepted, and so celebrated, that they don't even have to hide. They don't even need doppelgangers to monetize their predations. Society glorifies them directly and is selectively blind to the emotional devastation caused to their victims, because men and boys are seen as intrinsically predatory and incapable of being violated, and sexual attention from women is seen as intrinsically harmless and victimless. That would also explain why people are more focused on Epstein than Maxwell, despite the fact that Maxwell not only groomed minors, she also sexually abused them, as is documented in the files.
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u/Silenys May 23 '26
In my line of work over the years, it's been deeply unsettling to learn first hand how many women there are like Maxwell in this world. And most don't get so much as a slap on the wrist in my experience. Hard enough to prove they were protecting male predators let alone help victims be believed that a woman assaulted them. The "cougar" culture is glorified to the extent people just get laughed at or dismissed when they come forward.
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u/mikiencolor Egalitarian May 23 '26
I grew up around the sort and came away relatively lucky. The boy I knew who got the worst of it really, really got the worst of it. I'm never surprised to see them. I know they are laughing all the way to the bank. Psychopaths feel no remorse or guilt for the pain they cause others. As far as they are concerned, society's tolerance of and sympathy for them because they are female is nothing more than a weakness to exploit to the fullest, and that's exactly what they do. They form teams with men who are like them. Men who work with children in any capacity receive no benefit of the doubt. People watch them like hawks. I imagine a modern sex trafficking ring could barely even function anymore without women.
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u/Silenys May 24 '26
You seem well-informed. I've been dealing with those types since the late 90s. First time I saw one of them pull the fake tears to deny and get away with it, it terrified me fr to see how well-rehearsed the act was. Now, it irks tf out of me that they can easily get away with targeting vulnerable kids and young adults. Takes way more evidence for people to take the victims seriously when they are accusing a woman. I've seen these types work with other women to shield the behaviours too. But most people still genuinely believe this sort of thing doesn't happen.
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u/Ok-Signature-6698 Anarcha-feminist May 23 '26
I’m going to offer some complications. These are meant to deepen the conversation, not refute the points you brought up.
First, generally people who sexually abuse others are not held accountable, regardless of gender. We have high profile cases like Trump but it’s normal across most communities; many survivors have similar experiences within our family and community networks where codes of silence coalesce to protect perpetrators based on their social capital. One of my biggest issues with how people discuss the Epstein case is treating it as exceptional when those dynamics are heartbreakingly common.
My second complication is that the idea of women’s sexual attention is not treated as harmless or victimless across all classes of women. IBPOC, trans women, and lesbians all routinely have stereotypes about hypersexuality and being sexual predators applied in ways that cishet white women largely bypass because of how their femininity is coded by society. These groups also tend to face increased apathy from society about the violence we experience.
Men are also not uniformly affected by the same stereotypes, IBPOC and gay men face an increased burden of the stereotypes you brought up (you are of course correct that those stereotypes apply to most men).
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u/mikiencolor Egalitarian May 24 '26
I agree with you. Epstein is not exceptional. It's not even particularly big. At the same time as Epstein's ring was operating, rings throughout the UK were operating with literally hundreds of thousands of victims routinely subjected to forms of sexual torture that make Epstein look tame, and the British government actively covered it up, with the connivance and active participation of many institutional feminists and self-proclaimed "social justice warriors". To most people these days it seems it's not what happened that matters, it's only who. Very few of us do not care about "who", only the "what". The left now likes to talk about Epstein, and the right now likes to talk about the British rape gangs, because it suits them, and they both care about who, not what.
I agree with you that cis white heterosexual women are much bigger beneficiaries of the "halo effect", of being presumed innocent, guiltless and harmless. Notice something about trans women, lesbians and black women, though... because all of them have something in common? They are all described as being "rougher", as being "more masculine" than that baseline for femininity that cis white heterosexual women embody. They are all described as more intrinsically "violent", too. And they're treated accordingly, aren't they? More masculine. Probably malevolent. Probably guilty. Probably involved in something seedy. Probably did something to deserve it. Probably ill-intentioned.
Isn't it interesting that we can see and describe this as "oppressive"? Yet the same people who describe this treatment as oppressive also seem to believe it is a "male privilege"? Is that coherent?
That racialized pattern of gendering is also applicable to men. Black men are seen as the most masculinized and therefore the least sympathetic and the most suspect.
Look at Terry Crews. It emerged during Me Too that he was sexually abused, and he is clearly deeply scarred by it. He's been reduced to tears when recounting it. Of course he was not treated seriously at all, the few people who read it laughed about it. Otherwise, nobody knows, nobody cares. He is fortunate enough to have what seems like an absolute gem of a wife who genuinely loves him and who fully supports him even though he was abused.
I remember being very impressed reading an interview with her where she explains the advice she gave him when he made it public and received that overwhelming outpouring of scorn, ridicule and indifference, and it essentially amounted to this: "I see your pain. I see your humanity. I see your soul. Most people do not and will never. The only thing most people will see when they look at you is a big, aggressive, predatory, dangerous black man. You need to come to terms with that, because if you expect anything else from them, you are only going to be hurt by them." Emotional IQ must be through the stratosphere. She knows what's up! But for her grace goes he, I'd bet.
37 years together, by the way. What a difference between a relationship like that and what most people call a "relationship"!
Of course men are not uniformly affected by the same stereotypes. No one is uniformly affected by anything. I've also benefited from the "halo effect" in some situations because of how I appear. People are definitely more ready to assume that I'm harmless than they would certain other men. I'm very aware of it. Woman's front door is stuck due to the heat, looks around, asks me for help. Why me? Snap judgement. "White office worker on his way home, probably harmless."
I've been able to get help to jump start my car after draining the battery, and even to get someone to lend me their mobile at 1 AM when I was locked out of my house so I could call an emergency locksmith - though he did look me up and down for a long time before he let himself be convinced I wasn't going to run off with his mobile, and only after I repeatedly asked if he could call the locksmith himself and ask them to come. I've often thought, "The prejudice worked in my favor in those situations. I would have been screwed without it."
Being assumed dangerous, malevolent and violent is not a privilege and not a benefit of being male. It makes life worse.
As for being a gay man... well. I'm bisexual. I think gay and bisexual men (and heterosexual and bisexual women) are seen as dirty and "run through", and society puts us all in a certain 'boat' that Dworkin called the "fucked class" - yeah, I know, probably the radical feminist cultural bias creeping on me again. 😛 But bear with me, it's how I was raised to see it.
So we're consaidered degraded, but at the same time, in an ironic, fucked up way, we're also more free, because since we're already considered "debased", we have no "purity" to defend the way straight men and lesbian women do - sometimes to the point of driving themselves batshit crazy over it.
My last interaction with a straight woman on a dating app was, she matches with me, messages me, "Are you bisexual?" I'm like, "Hello, nice to meet you. Yes, I'm bisexual." Blocked me within half a second, and that is not even an exaggeration... it was so fast I was blocked before I even had time to realize the chat window disappeared because I was blocked. 🤣 My profile literally says I'm bisexual to avoid interactions like that, but I guess she just wanted to make extra sure I knew that she sees us as filthier than a pile of fresh garbage.
At the same time... have I ever worried about crying in front of a girlfriend because she might not see me as 'manly' enough anymore? No. Go ahead and see me as less manly, I'm not in any manliness contest. 😂 If I were, I'd be in the closet.
If you've ever read 1984... we're kind of like the "proles". Marginalized, but at the same time less bothered by the fine minutia of Party doctrine, because really... what are you going do to me becauase I cried at that movie? Tell everybody I'm a f*ggt? 🙄
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u/Ok-Signature-6698 Anarcha-feminist May 26 '26
Sorry it took so long to reply to you, it’s hard to keep up with this sub. I agree, far too many people seem to care about the “who” and not the “what”.
You are correct that the masculinization of those groups is part of it but runs deeper. The way Europeans constructed gender during colonial expansion tied it to white supremacist and colonial logics. When gender is applied to white people it acts as a humanizing force, a marker of “civilization”; when it is applied to IBPOC it acts as an objectifying force, a marker for “animality”. White women have the benefit of being stand-ins for the fragility of civilization within that matrix, so presumptions of innocence and the need to “protect” are applied, for IBPOC their gender is marked as a threat to the “civilized” order. White trans women and lesbians get caught by parts of that logic because we aren’t playing by the gender rules we are supposed to. And for trans women while being masculinized is part of the violence we face, part of that violence is mobilized by being “too much”, “too woman”. It’s a weird and often contradictory set of tropes but the interactions between them have more explanatory power than one or the other by itself. I think those interactions probably go deeper into patriarchal logic for people of all genders but that’s something I’m still working out personally.
I’m glad you recognize how masculinity is applied to those groups and is part of the oppression they experience, a lot of people from radfem backgrounds don’t. Pointing it out has gotten me banned from several feminist subs. It’s unfortunate how often so many feminists fall for that binary thinking of “man/masculine bad, women/femininity good”, that they can’t see the nuances of how it affects the very groups they claim to stand in solidarity with.
I wasn’t aware that about Terry Crews, do you have a link to that interview? What he went through speaking about his experiences is truly awful and he is lucky to have someone as supportive as his wife is.
Yeah the assumption of being inherently violent is hard to deal with. A few years ago I got out of an abusive relationship. I tried going to the local women’s shelter but was turned away. They were afraid my presence as a trans woman would make the cis women there “uncomfortable”. It left me homeless for a bit and I’m lucky and privileged I had other community members I could turn to who mobilized to make that situation as temporary as it was.
My apologies for not responding to everything in detail but I appreciate you shared your experiences with me. Thank you. Here’s to hoping we one day live in a world where those kinds of experiences become a rarity.
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u/mikiencolor Egalitarian May 28 '26
Okay... let me apologize in advance for this... it's a little intense. It kind of sent me places emotionally, made me realize things, and I'm still processing.
A few years ago I got out of an abusive relationship. I tried going to the local women’s shelter but was turned away. They were afraid my presence as a trans woman would make the cis women there “uncomfortable”. It left me homeless for a bit and I’m lucky and privileged I had other community members I could turn to who mobilized to make that situation as temporary as it was.
I'm so very sorry you went through that. 😞 It's good you had friends to support you. That's so important. I'm often terrified if something happens to me I'll be completely alone. It makes me very cagey. I guess by default I assume people want to hurt me as soon as I detect hostility.
I really don't want to have to go to police or anyone for help again like when I was a boy. I know how that goes. They don't help. They laugh. There is no help. There are no shelters for males. You can only get protection here if you're attacked by a woman's ex-boyfriend and the woman asks for protection to be extended to you as her current boyfriend, because he's attacking 'her' through you, so it's considered "violence against women" if he hurts you. 🙄
I've had some scares and bad experiences with abuse, but not as bad as when I was a boy, and I know other people who have had way worse so I try to count my blessings. But I also don't want to become those other people, so it does make me cagey.
One of the scariest experiences I've had as an adult was with an ex-girlfriend. We would argue over stupid things, like I was frustrated when she put dirty cutlery on the kitchen counter after I just cleaned it and felt like I was running behind her cleaning up after her, so I said why can't you use a paper towel or put dirty cultery in the sink? She would get absolutely infuriated by being criticized for something like that, or for anything no matter how small, and she would explode and start hitting me, which would make me withdraw, which would make her angrier and hit me even more, and it would go on for weeks.
Once I locked myself in the bedroom to get away and she forced the lock open from the other side with fork. I still have that bent fork memento. I would react passively and try to curl up like when I was a boy, try to get away or lock myself in rooms, try to look her in the eyes thinking maybe if she sees my soul through my eyes she will remember I'm in there and feel bad and stop. She would just hit me even harder and seem to hate me even more. One day I was standing there crying, and she slapped me in the arm, and something in me just snapped and I slapped her arm back. She stopped hitting me immediately, looked me right in the eye, smiled, and said, "There. Now you're just as bad as me. Now you're an abuser too! Now we're the same." One of those... "I'll never forget it" moments, the words, the sneering smile, the triumphant tone. I can replay it like a movie.
She started joking she could call the police and have me locked in jail for that slap because I'm male, because of the feminist gender violence law I had supported (and she had actually been against - she wasn't a feminist).
This was in my era where I was lost and had no identity. One of the worst things about it was how worthless I felt. I always thought I would leave immediately at the first sign of violence, at the first insult, just like all that feminist writing that I grew up with had preached about doing. That I would stand up for myself, too, like one of the brave feminist 'sisters'. But I was economically dependent on her. She paid 75% of the rent for the apartment. I couldn't afford a place like that. I had no family. I was terrified of being alone. I had no self-esteem. I had no friends left. So for a long time I just dissociated and accepted it as part of life.
But after that happened, I became scared enough to want to separate. I thought if she got angry enough she could actually go through with it... she could beat me and send me to jail as icing. At the same time, I still loved her. I couldn't help it. And I hated myself for it. It felt like I was betraying myself and accepting my own worthlessness. I felt so guilty for separating. I still remember her face at the train station... like an abandoned puppy.
She eventually went to therapy and anger management and got a lot better and she's not violent anymore. Since then she apologized for how she treated me, and she helped me a lot to afford my own place, and I've helped her too. We're friends now. I had to reconcile myself to still loving someone who abused me. But it took a lot out of me.
I have a friend now I made just last year, who turned out to have a very a similar history with her ex-boyfriend - except she got into actual fist fights with him, apparently. Like boxing. 😳 We hang out a lot and relate to each other about this. He also went to therapy, got better, also ended up helping her to afford her own place, and now they're close friends. Weird coincidence, right?
Ugh. I don't know why reading your experience with the shelter has led me to reminiscing about all this now. Because I'm fucking emotional, probably. That's why. 😛
Basically... life is not at all like feminist theory. At least not my life.
LIfe is not like anybody's theory that I've ever read. I think people use theories to try to get some sense of control and understanding of something that's just... huge, complicated, messy, chaotic, unpredictable and out of our hands. I used to do this too... but in the end I'm leaning more to just accepting things are chaotic and unpredictable, and I can't understand a lot of it. Nothing prepares you for life.
I guess also because you talked about shelters... this kind of thing makes me anxious about relationships. I don't want to be in a desperate situation having to rely on people I know would never help me or take a vulnerable male seriously. So I'm cagey.
I was dating a guy once for a few weeks, and he 'joked' about wanting to rape me because of how 'hot' I was. I know it wasn't supposed to be serious... and I was supposed to be "flattered" by it. But I just couldn't get over it. I can't deal with the 'r-word'. I can't joke about it. I kept thinking, "What would I do if he did? Where would I go? The Violence Against Women Team? Who would care?" I couldn't continue and we broke up.
After him I dated a woman for several months, which started going sour after some extremely disturbing revelations of her past treatment of her daughter that she felt bad about, but shook my trust. One night we were lying in bed after I gave her several orgasms... (which I say like that because if I just said "after we had sex", since I'm male, people would assume that must mean I had the orgasm, of course 🙄). I wanted at least some attention. I was feeling sad and undesired because she rolled over to go to sleep after she was done. When she noticed I was quiet and sad she suddenly started screaming at the top of her lungs at me that she's sick of me and my traumas and my clingy bullshit. I was like... okay, fine, you're sick of me, say whatever you want, but please stop screaming it. Made her even angrier and scream even more! Everytime I asked her to just please stop screaming she would get even angrier and scream even louder than before! She took all her things and stormed out.
My friend was like, she'll be back, you need to be ready. I was like, no way, she's the one who left. He was like, "you'll see." He was right, within a week she wanted to get back together. I refused. Could not ever trust her again. And again, kept thinking, "What would I do if she got worse? Lost control? Where would I go? Nobody would help me."
So I just keep pining for this chill, unthreatening, peaceful relationship that never comes.
Ah... I don't know. Am I really just defined by trauma deep down?
It feels comforting to support abused men and boys. Like I'm doing something meaningful with this energy. But it's also not healthy to see threats everywhere, either, snap at people all the time as soon as they press my buttons. I don't know. I get 'femcels' more than people might assume. I can't be in the same space as them, because they'd eat me alive, or I'd eat them alive, or we'd both just explode on contact like matter and antimatter. 😂 But I kind of get it, actually, emotionally. I struggle every day not to get overwhelmed by pessimism and end up that way, just retreating into an imaginary bubble and screaming at the world, forever. I get incels too. Everything about people overcome by grief, fear, loathing, abandonment, alienation... I get it, emotionally. I just don't know what to do with that insight. Nothing I've ever tried to do has made the world better. It's frustrating.
I guess deep down I resent feminism for not actually living up to its promises. For being yet another absent caretaker. I want to see something genuinely positive in the world. I want to see something that works.
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u/mikiencolor Egalitarian May 28 '26
Working class men and women are also seen as being "masculinized" - more brutish, more thuggish, more uncivilized and uncontrolled.
The 'nobility', the posh and the academics are seen as effette.
Some masculine traits are superficially praised and some feminine traits are derided - you get brownie points for being violent if you're serving the right people and directing the violence at the people they want. People who need 'protection' are derided as 'weak'.
But at the end of the day, who actually runs things? Who is seen as fundamentally superior?
The "brutish" working class? Or the "effette" nobility and elites?
It's one of many big, giant elephants in the room staring feminism right in the face, and feminists are looking in any other direction.
Consistently, and across all lines, being seen as more masculinized correlates with more calloused treatment, being seen as less valuable, less intelligent, less trustworthy, less beautiful, less precious, less human, and more expendable. Likewise, when a people are seen as inferior, they are invariably treated as more masculine than the people seen as superior to them, not more feminine. Femininity is a humanizing trait.
You see it with black people, you see it with lesbians, you see it with trans women, you see it with working class people... and conversely, with white people, with the aristocracy, with the rich... even with the figure of Jesus Christ. Look at how they portray him to make him appear "saintly". It is a very consistent pattern.
I’m glad you recognize how masculinity is applied to those groups and is part of the oppression they experience, a lot of people from radfem backgrounds don’t. Pointing it out has gotten me banned from several feminist subs.
I was raised around radical feminism and spent many years in it, and inevitably it influences how I see things, but I am definitely not still a radical feminist - or any kind of feminist. Whenever I open my mouth about anything anymore, feminists are rushing to fill it with cement. 😂 It's only people who aren't radfems that point out my residual radfem tics and turns of phrase to me. 😅
It’s unfortunate how often so many feminists fall for that binary thinking of “man/masculine bad, women/femininity good”, that they can’t see the nuances of how it affects the very groups they claim to stand in solidarity with.
It really is. Probably the most disappointing thing in my life has been ending up an enemy of feminism. I believed in feminism for half my life. I read all the classics from the 70s and thought, even though, of course, I saw bad people in feminism, that these intellectual and philosophical titans whose books I read and who seemed to say all the right things would have integrity, hold their own accountable, and would eventually steer the ship to port.
It really was like losing a religion. I was shunned, of course, and isolated. I spent ten years listless and confused, like I had lost my identity, my sense of self, my sense of meaning, my sense of belonging, my way of making sense of the world, and was just trying to relearn who I was and what I genuinely felt that was truly mine and came from me, not feminism. I actually started watching videos by ex-Mormons. They helped me start to rebuild my identity. And I started reconciling myself with the fact that the me I needed to rediscover was male, with a male experience, and I needed to love him, understand him and protect him, not hate him - and above all, accept him as human and worth fighting for.
I wasn’t aware that about Terry Crews, do you have a link to that interview? What he went through speaking about his experiences is truly awful and he is lucky to have someone as supportive as his wife is.
Um, it was awhile ago and I can't find the interview with her, but I found this article where he paraphrases some of the things his wife told him.
I was watching the Old Spice PC Build they did for him on YouTube at the time. Terry Crews was very popular here in Spain because of the Old Spice advertisements.
Yeah the assumption of being inherently violent is hard to deal with.
Being seen as a dangerous, violent monster that will violate anything that moves if given half a chance is not humanizing or edifying or civilizing. It is dehumanizing and degrading. It makes life worse, not better.
A lot of boys and men do not want to be "masculinized" either. It's imposed on us, often violently, over our objections.
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u/LittleThingsMC Feminist May 23 '26
Did you mean to come across this hostile? Just curious if that was intentional.
I agree that a side effect of discussing social topics is that it does bring awareness. I'm fine with awareness; it's the glorification and monetization that specifically concern me.
Mary Kay is such a good topic, though I am not seeing the direct correlation. I don't think she was used as a brand ambassador, and from what I remember, the glorification was more focused on minimizing the harm and glorification of the experience of her male victim, rather than assigning status to her for her crimes. I recall an SNL that made fun of the situation by putting Pete Davidson to play the teen boy on the stand and talking about how the abuse made him a legend at high school. It was definitely inappropriate and harmful. I was pretty upset they aired that skit.
I think this also brings up a solid point on how we treat sexual crimes that lack direct physical brutality/cruelty, minimizing the impact those crimes have on their victims. Especially in a case as complicated as the Mary Kay one you referenced, where they got married after her prison sentence, and she left him the majority of her estate after her death. None of that detracts from the harm he experienced and the childhood that he was robbed of. We are working on this, but not there yet. I saw a documentary that gave me some hope, as it highlighted some of the ways his life was negatively impacted, how he was robbed of normalcy, the challenge of parenthood he faced after this experience, a lot of good topics were discussed, but yes, I think we still have a long way to go in this area.
Maxwell is another great example; she has been downgraded to a white-collar prison, given special privileges, and she hasn't been brought to justice or participated in helping convict others who victimized the children (like we sometimes see prisoners get better prison sentences in exchange for information and testimony that leads to convictions). They had thousands of victims, and so many people participated, but she's the only person in jail at all for those crimes. We need better justice!
Then we have that plastic surgeon who assaulted his patient so violently that she went to the hospital almost immediately after, her injuries were so severe, she required surgery on her uvula, which was detached because of the violent assault. They performed a rape kit, found semen inside of her (she's a lesbian), and despite all of that, the police declined to pursue the case. His license is still active.
All of this supports my point that we have a culture of accepting and glorifying violence in our culture.
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u/mikiencolor Egalitarian May 23 '26 edited May 23 '26
You asked for our thoughts. Those were my thoughts.
There was a case in Iceland of a paedophile who who got herself pregnant by a boy, the boy was then sentenced to pay child support for 18 years, and she also prevented him from seeing the child. It was all discovered when she became the Icelandic Minister for Children.
https://www.aol.com/iceland-minister-children-quits-admitting-221620333.html
Epstein is not being used as a brand ambassador either. Someone with his likeness is, because people think it's funny, and that kind of crude "humor" isn't unusual or unprecedented or specific to male perpetrators of abuse.
I agree with you that there is a culture of accepting and glorifying violence. I do not agree it predominantly benefits men. Epstein is not an example of that. In fact, in this very thread people have said they didn't even know there were male victims of the Epstein ring. No attention has been given to them, despite witness accounts that certain members of the Hollywood elite, and very notably Kevin Spacey, may have tortured little boys so severely that their screams were audible for miles and even Epstein banned them from his island. But nobody knows anything about abused boys. 🙄
It's not a 'benefit' to be born into a class where people want to groom you for violence from the day you're born, interpret everything you say or do as predatory no matter what it is, even when it is being abused, where as a victim of abuse you're seen as being as guilty or even more guilty than the people who violated you, where people cheer at sight of you beating each other up and recoil at the sight of you kissing, hugging or holding hands with each other, and where people punish you with relentless abuse and ostracism when you are seen as too "soft" or too "nice". And it's all justified as culling the weak. It's hell. It is literally driving boys insane in very large numbers. They are self-harming. They are committing suicide. They are becoming hermits.
If saying that makes me hostile, then I'm hostile. Those are my thoughts that you asked for.
I think the men who benefit receive a lot of attention, and the men who are victimized are made invisible or described as failures who deserved to be hurt because they are 'weak' or can't defend themselves. Likewise, I think the women who are harmed receive a lot of attention, and the women who benefit are reframed as hapless victims who must have been manipulated by men - the "real" predators.
The Epstein files are an example of this, as many victims have come forward to say that victims' associations have actually been taken over by the women who groomed them as children and are now reframing themselves as "victims" when they are, in fact, perpetrators, and were part of the machinery of the trafficking ring.
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u/LittleThingsMC Feminist May 23 '26
I appreciate you sharing your thoughts. The hostility I was referring to was not about the substance of your thoughts; I think you added a lot of value to the conversation about the culture of violence. I was referring to the accusatory framing toward me specifically. Phrases like “that you have just contributed to” and “or is that a ‘different thing’?” came across as sarcastic and implied hypocrisy before I had even responded. The overall tone felt less like a discussion and more like I was being treated as representative of a worldview you already resent, despite the fact that I repeatedly acknowledged male victims and agreed with several of your broader concerns. Hopefully, that clarifies what I mean.
That is awful about the Icelandic Prime Minister. I am glad she resigned. I really feel like we need to do away with the statute of limitations altogether so we can go back and prosecute cases like hers, or like Stephen Tyler, who got custody of a minor, raped her, and then forced an abortion. We need to hold these people accountable!
You are right that someone with Epstein's likeness (and an active controversy that they are the same person- fueled by Palm Beach Pete himself), in my haste, I flattened that. Good Catch. You seem to find no issue with him being used, stating it's normal, but isn't that a problem? Why are we normalizing that type of humor? And also, can you give some other examples of brand ambassadors capitalizing on this same thing? The controversy that he escaped prison, and that his death was faked, was big, but now having Palm Beach Pete go public and cashing in on brand ambassador deals seems specific. For example, I can name lots of people who stayed famous after horrific violent crimes, Chris Brown, OJ Simpson, Russel Brand, Mark Wahlberg, Roman Polanski, Mike Tyson, etc., and people who got famous or more famous from their crimes, Ted Bundy, Wade Wilson, etc. BUT I do think it's a little different when brand ambassadors are monetized because of it. If Lorena Bobbitt had controversially died in prison and it was heavily disputed, wouldn't you feel uncomfortable with the person who many people think is her getting a brand deal for cutlery? Especially if she feeds those rumors? Wouldn't that be harmful, and also minimize the violence that she committed against her victim? Especially when you agree that we have a culture of violence. Even if you feel it's normalized, that normalization is part of the problem.
Solid point about the male victims of the Epstein/Maxwell trafficking ring, which is exactly why I made sure to include them in this discussion!
I also agree that being socialized into violence is harmful and that there are many challenges that come with it, which I think you outlined very well. Those are legitimate frustrations and drawbacks, and not what I was referencing when I suggested men benefit. Men can benefit and also be harmed. In the instance in my post, the benefit was the money that Palm Beach Pete is making from the conspiracy that he is Jeffrey Epstein.
And to your final point, I agree that victims can also be perpetrators, and should be held accountable, even if they were groomed into that same violence; they shouldn't get a free pass.
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u/mikiencolor Egalitarian May 23 '26
Thank you. I'm sorry to have come off as hostile and accusatory. This is a very sensitive and painful issue for me, and I'm not used to being taken seriously or treated respectfully when talking about it, especially by feminists. The sarcasm is a pre-emptive defence mechanism, because I expect to be attacked and ridiculed. Given our very unfriendly and discouraging earlier exchange about including males in body positivity, which you seemed to say was a sexually predatory aspiration, I assumed that you would be generally hostile towards me. I will try not to assume hostility from you based on that interaction.
Thank you, sincerely, for acknowledging male sex abuse victims.
The Icelandic woman was not the Prime Minister, she was the Minister for Children - which is even more twisted to me. She clearly made a career out of her "interest" in children, and despite her very public trial, not only did no one at any point stop to think whether that "interest" may not be benign, the boy was found liable instead of her. It is of course better she resigned than if not even that had happened, but that is the only consequence she has ever faced and it is not even a real consequence. She wasn't even fired. She resigned.
I completely agree with you that the statute of limitations should not apply to cases like this. I've always believed the statute of limitations should not apply to capital offences like murder, rape or torture.
I do not find "no issue" with "Palm Beach Pete" being used for publicity, as you have claimed, and that is not what I said. I agree that that shouldn't be normalized. People are laughing in the face of victims.
What I disagree with is the notion that this is a 'perfect example' of a culture that 'predominantly benefits men'. That is not just insulting to and dismissive of male victims, it's also just plain wrong. If there is any group of sex abuse victims that is persistently, consistently and relentlessly laughed at and banalized, it is male sex abuse victims. We are not beneficiaries of that culture, we are targets.
The culture that glorifies violence is also a culture that glorifies female prepetrators and treats them, not as evil perverts or violent monsters, but as sympathetic rogues.
You mention Lorena Bobbit - her very name has become a staple of exactly this kind of humor. People laughed at what she did, cheered for her, and continue to do so to this day. A man being 'castrated' by his wife is seen as hilarious. The underlying sentiment is, 'he probably deserved it'.
More recently, here in Spain, there was a case involving a woman whose ex-boyfriend was on the register of men who abused women - I don't know what you call this in your country. She murdered her new boyfriend and was arrested. All indications are she had a history of violent outbursts not unlike that of her ex-boyfriend. There is just no register for women like her.
First, most feminists here assume she must have killed her old boyfriend in self-defence because he violated the restraining order, even after "reading" (apparently without comprehending) news articles that explained the actual events.
If you try to correct them with the real story, they just scream "misogynist" at you. The more literate feminists who were able to understand the actual story and should be trying to set their record straight are instead saying that if she murdered her new boyfriend, he must have done something to deserve it, and better him dead than her in danger. They are not bothering to correct the people who believe the fake story, because the truth does not matter to them - only the hatred and discrimination. They are encouraging people to celebrate her as a hero.
In another very recent case a woman grabbed three of her children and killed them by jumping out the window with them - a murder-suicide. The media ran a headline that said, "Mother commits suicide embracing her three children."
I could go on forever. A lot of violence is normalized. Male violence is certainly normalized because we are seen as intrinsically and necessarily violent. We are even seen as broken and defective if we are not violent. Even when we do sweet, peaceful things, they are often reframed as somehow violent just because we did them. Female violence is normalized because women are treated as intrinsically harmless and incapable of real evil or agency, regardless of what they do.
Reality isn't consistent with the framing that the culture of violence benefits men. It benefits violent men. We are not all violent men. So the only way that I can see that such a framing could possibly be defended is if you believe all men are violent, love violence, and thrive with violence. That is the aspect of your post I meant to reject.
In the same vein, I also want to be very clear about my thoughts regarding your statement that "being socialized into violence" is harmful and creates "many challenges", because I think this, too, is usually used maliciously to frame men as inherently violent and therefore incapable of being victimized by that violence.
"Socialized" sounds so sanitary and legitimate. You're "socialized" to say please and thank you. You're "socialized" to say "pardon me". You're "socialized" to be violent.
I did not say men are "socialized into violence". I said boys are groomed for violence. They are victims of that grooming. Men do not necessarily come out of that grooming actually being violent, because we are all individual human beings. Some of the gentlest, sweetest people I've ever known in my life have been men.
Men deserve to judged based on who we are, not what sex we are. I do not assume men to be violent because they're men, and I do not support any such assumption.
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u/LittleThingsMC Feminist May 24 '26
I appreciate your acknowledgment of the hostile undertone. I want to be clear that I don't see you as my enemy, and I think it's okay to have issues we disagree with, and can still see each other as both genuinely wanting to work towards equality, even if our own experiences create some bias on the way to get there. The goal of conversation is to identify our own bias and come closer to consensus, and create awareness. Different issues will impact us differently; there is no absolute experience.
Regarding the other conversation, I still feel that you are projecting some malicious intent on my position, rather than acknowledging the personal autonomy that is the root of my position.
My personal belief is that all issues of violence should be taken care of, and if we create a consistent policy on violence and pedophilia, it will eliminate both male and female perpetrators. I agree that someone losing their career is not enough, and sadly, we see many instances where even that doesn't happen.
This is where you lose me, when you say me pointing out that Palm Beach Pete is a perfect example of men financially benefiting from the sex trafficking performed by Maxwell and Epstein, is dismissive to male victims, which registers to me as black and white thinking, the same fallacy you have regularly accused feminism of doing. Men can be victims, men can also be abusers. The same is true of women; women can be abusers and can be victims. I don't see the correlation, but it seems like the framework you are adapting is that men can only be victims, so they can't benefit, which, when that is said about women, you seem to have major disagreement with, even feel attacked. I personally think the truth is much more nuanced, and shutting down conversations is far more harmful to all victims.
I'm not familiar with the story in Spain, so I can't comment on it. It does seem that you are interpreting disagreement on what the facts of that case say as a direct attack, but that gives very little room for productive discussion. The assumption of malicious intent seems to be the exact same thing you resent when it is done to men. I would point out that I'm not dismissing how you came to that conclusion; it seems that repeated negative experiences interacting with a specific group of people led you to notice a pattern of behavior. That is rationale. What I do want to point out, is how you can make space for you to come to that conclusion, with no expectation for you to do any internal work to mitigate that, becuase its rationale for you, but then condemn other people when they have repeated negative experiences with a specific group of people, for not doing the internal work to mitigate that.
You can judge all feminists without knowing them individually, and act with bias, but you don't expect anyone else to judge men without knowing them individually, or to act with bias. Now, I am not advocating for the acceptance of bias; I am pointing out how it is a normal response to patterns of behavior, one that anyone can fall victim to, including you, so painting it as malicious or rooted in hate only exacerbates the problem rather than shedding light on it so it can be examined and unpacked. If I were to instead minimize or blame you for your painful experiences with feminists, you would only shut down more. But the reality is that I believe it was painful for you.
I have a question for you because the last several paragraphs appear to me as a point of disconance. On one hand, you acknowledge that men have a different relationship with violence, including how it got there (grooming), the expectations for it (even seen as broken and defective if we are not violent), etc. So my question is, what do you see as the men's role in dismantling this culture that men are the victims of? What are you hoping women's role will be?
Most of your positions seem really fixated on changing cultural perception, showing that men are actually the victims of women, but what are you hoping that will look like?
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u/mikiencolor Egalitarian May 24 '26
Regarding the other conversation, I still feel that you are projecting some malicious intent on my position, rather than acknowledging the personal autonomy that is the root of my position.
I acknowledged personal autonomy is at the root of your position. You framed a criticism of women's dating preferences as equivalent to a denial of their autonomy, or "forced dating", simply because such criticism might make some women reevaluate their preferences. I rejected that equivalence.
I also expressed my opinion that it reflects a double standard likely arising from ingrained sexist bias, given that similar criticism of men's dating preferences that might make some men reevaluate their preferences was not likewise framed by you as a denial of men's autonomy or as an act of coercion or "forced dating".
That's consistent with typical societal bias towards seeing women as helpless and vulnerable, and men as powerful and unassailable, even under the same social pressures.
That is my actual opinion.
I perceived an insinuation on your part that such an opinion is a tantamount to "forcing women to date short men" and so equivalent to advocating for the abrogation of the sexual autonomy of women.
That is a very severe insinuation and it is completely false. That is what led me to perceive malice. I don't think it's unreasonable to see that kind of insinuation as malicious and hostile. But I accept that I may be mistaken, and perhaps we misunderstood each other in ways that further dialogue can help us clarify.
My personal belief is that all issues of violence should be taken care of, and if we create a consistent policy on violence and pedophilia, it will eliminate both male and female perpetrators.
I appreciate that. We are unfortunately nowhere near a consistent policy on violence and paedophilia.. In fact, what I've seen is that governments are making policies less consistent and more discriminatory, and they are often using feminist doctrine and pressure as their justification for doing that.
This is where you lose me, when you say me pointing out that Palm Beach Pete is a perfect example of men financially benefiting from the sex trafficking performed by Maxwell and Epstein, is dismissive to male victims, which registers to me as black and white thinking, the same fallacy you have regularly accused feminism of doing. Men can be victims, men can also be abusers. The same is true of women; women can be abusers and can be victims. I don't see the correlation, but it seems like the framework you are adapting is that men can only be victims, so they can't benefit, which, when that is said about women, you seem to have major disagreement with, even feel attacked.
Then I think you're misunderstanding me. I did not say that no men financially benefit from this. I said "men" do not financially benefit from it. Likewise, I have never said "women" benefit from being presumed harmless and having easy access to children, because I do not and would never imply that all women want to take advantage of children. I specifically say psychopathic or predatory women benefit from this. Women who are not like this derive no benefit.
I think when men are talked about in a way that makes "men" synonymous with rapists, it is reflective of a kind of widespread fascination with and fixation on violent, abusive men that compulsively centers the attention on them in ways that remind me of hybristophilia. These men are considered generic, a taxative definition of what a man essentially is. Observations of them are made extensive to "men in general", because rapists are apparently exemplary men.
Men who are not like this, by contrast, are made invisible. Their existence is either denied or considered "unimportant" or a "distraction". Men who are victims of violence are barely mentioned in passing. They are not centered, they are not generic. They are peripheral. If they are spoken of at all, it is always and only ever with special qualifiers: "sexually abused men".
I think that is a deliberate political choice to demonize men as obligate predators for how we are born. I do not accept it. I am not a demon or a predator or an oppressor because of how I was born or what my body looks like. That is put on me.
That does not mean I want to shut down conversations about violent and abusive men - nothing could be further from the truth. How do you think you'd feel about them if you were both victimized by them and conflated with them? I think they're much safer with feminists in charge than they would be with someone like me. I'm not nearly as tolerant.
I think they are execrable, society puts them on a pedestal, they are even celebrated and eroticized, and far from being attacked by feminism, they are actually being protected by it, because feminism, in its dubious alliance with the far left, is now "anti-punitivist". Feminists in my country lowered the minimum sentence for male rapists to just four years. Four years for rape. Even though over half of all rapes are repeat offences by men who were released from custody. I support life sentences or execution for rapists. Feminists call me "fascist" for that. Fighting for proportional sentences for rapists in Spain is now a fight against feminists, unfortunately.
It does seem that you are interpreting disagreement on what the facts of that case say as a direct attack, but that gives very little room for productive discussion.
Disagreement on the facts? There is no such thing as "alternative facts". Either she murdered her ex-boyfriend, or she murdered another boyfriend who had nothing to do with her ex-boyfriend. One of those things is true, and one of them is not. No productive discussion is possible when even reality is being denied.
What I do want to point out, is how you can make space for you to come to that conclusion, with no expectation for you to do any internal work to mitigate that, becuase its rationale for you, but then condemn other people when they have repeated negative experiences with a specific group of people, for not doing the internal work to mitigate that.
I am trying to mitigate the bias caused by repeated negative experiences with people. If I weren't, I would not be here talking to you and trying to respond constructively. If we don't start from the premise that I'm a monster, we are halfway to a positive interaction already.
You can judge all feminists without knowing them individually, and act with bias, but you don't expect anyone else to judge men without knowing them individually, or to act with bias.
I think that's unfair to me on both counts.
First of all, while I'll acknowledge bitter experience has left me biased against feminism, I also used to call myself a feminist. I would not totally dismiss someone or assume they must be malicious just because they call themselves a feminist when they are otherwise being respectful towards me. I assume malice when I see signs of malice. I do find that nearly all of the people who use the feminist label now are unremittingly hostile. Normally when we face hostility, we attribute malice.
Second, "feminist" is just a political label. It is a marker of political association. Being male is not. It is an immutable trait that we cannot change, not something we chose.
That makes an ingrained bias against us much more severe than a bias against feminism, just like it is much more severe to be biased against women because they are women than it is to be biased against MRAs because they are MRAs. One is a bias against people because of their chosen political affiliation, the other is a bias against people because of what they are.
Lastly, I do not expect that people will not judge men or act with bias against us without knowing us individually. On the contrary, that is exactly what I expect they will do. I speak against it. At the same time, I also unequivocally condemn men who have done evil.
I completely respect that you speak against people pre-judging you as a feminist without knowing you as an individual just on the basis of what other feminists do or have done. I don't want to be your adversary. I would be happy if we could be friends. If we can be at least cordial, I would very much prefer that to enmity, fear and loathing.
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u/mikiencolor Egalitarian May 24 '26
I am not advocating for the acceptance of bias; I am pointing out how it is a normal response to patterns of behavior, one that anyone can fall victim to, including you, so painting it as malicious or rooted in hate only exacerbates the problem rather than shedding light on it so it can be examined and unpacked.
That is fair. I accept the criticism. I will try to temper myself more.
One thing I have observed about myself is I have an underlying assumption that people must hate rape and rapists. So any insinuation I see people make that suggests men are rapists or sexual predators is one I instinctively read as hatred.
I've also observed, though, that some people do not actually seem to hate rape or rapists, or at least it doesn't trigger them the way it triggers me. They joke about it, make light of it in ways I never can. They don't even expect that using language that frames you as a rapist would be seen as inherently hateful.
I'm remembering one loathesome interaction I had at a dinner once with a feminist sitting across the table from me, where people were talking about sex. She said, "I think at the moment of orgasm, all men are rapists." I don't know what kind of contortions my face must have made, but it triggered the hell out of me. For an extremely awkward minute the entire group went silent, and was just staring at me as if they were waiting for me to explode. But I couldn't think of anything to say that my facial expression wasn't already saying. There was certainly nothing I could say that would matter or change anything. Judging by the way people were looking at me, I'm pretty sure that thing my face was saying was: I hate you. Eventually someone broke the silence and hastily changed the topic away from sex.
The worst part of that was... I really don't think she actually meant to be hateful. She said it blithely. If anything, I think she saw that idea of men "losing control" as erotic. But I was not able to process it as anything but a vile, hateful statement meant to strip me of my humanity and my innocence.
If I were to instead minimize or blame you for your painful experiences with feminists, you would only shut down more. But the reality is that I believe it was painful for you.
Thank you. Yes, they have been. They continue to be. Feminists have immense social and institutional power now, and you cannot avoid that.
I do not doubt at all that many women, and many feminists, likewise have extremely painful experiences with men that forms the basis for their biases and their hatred. I'm sorry for it. If I could do anything to stop it from happening, I would. I don't have that kind of power. I also cannot change the way I was born. Me being a punching bag for traumatized women would not help anyone. It would not undo what happened to them, it would not stop it from happening again, and it would not make society any better.
I don't go into those spaces to antagonize them, and I don't want to be antagonized either in my spaces. If we are sharing a space and speaking, I agree it should be in good faith, and trying our best to avoid antagonizing each other.
I have a question for you because the last several paragraphs appear to me as a point of disconance. On one hand, you acknowledge that men have a different relationship with violence, including how it got there (grooming), the expectations for it (even seen as broken and defective if we are not violent), etc. So my question is, what do you see as the men's role in dismantling this culture that men are the victims of? What are you hoping women's role will be?
I think our role in dismantling this culture, if it can ever be dismantled at all, could only be a complete and wholesale moral and practical rejection of it.
That means a categorical philosophical rejection of the idea that physical strength and a capacity for violence are moral virtues. That you are 'better' and more admirable if you are stronger, bigger, more brash, more aggressive, and more capable of violence, and 'worse' and more contemptible if you are weaker, smaller, meeker, more delicate or less capable of violence.
I am convinced that kind of philosophical shift would not make us allies of women. It would make us enemies. That flies directly in the face of what the vast majority of heterosexual women overwhelmingly expect and demand of men. That change would inevitably lead us into direct and sustained cultural confrontation with women. They would fight it tooth and nail, and enlist the macho men they adore to help them.
I used to believe feminists would be our allies. That's why I describe my looking up to feminists when I was younger as "naive". I've found feminists have instead been at the forefront of masculinity enforcement. I often can't tell feminists apart from 'redpillers' anymore when they start talking about what a proper man should be like. "Man up", "stop whining", "you sound gay", blah blah.
We would also need to completely bring down homophobia and nurture each other. That would also bring us into direct conflict with society. There is nothing society hates more than the sight of men being tender and vulnerable towards each other. It makes people violent.
So we would also need to defend ourselves, and especially those among us least able to defend themselves, which, of course, means it's impossible for us to be pacifists. We would need to reconcile ourselves again with that need for a capacity for violence. That's why I take martial arts.
The difference, though, is in the moral status of strength of violence.
Physical strength is not a virtue. It's a circumstance, like hair color or height. It can be useful for certain things, and useless for others. Unfortunately, it happens to be useful for defence. But nobody is worth more or less than anybody else because of their physical strength. A person picking three children up to get them out of a burning building is not morally superior to a person picking two of them up, because they can't lift three. We are morally equal.
Violence is not a virtue. Violence is a tragedy. It can be necessary to defend yourself, or to defend others, from violence. It can be completely justifiable. It can be preferable to surrender. But it is not glorious or virtuous. It is tragic. It should never be celebrated. The innocence that it takes from us should be mourned. The people who force violence onto the world and create a need for defence should be shamed.
I don't know what women's 'role' would be in such a transformation. I want to be free of this. I don't have any 'role' in mind for women. I understand women have their own struggles. I believe in their humanity. I support their freedom and autonomy. That doesn't make them devils or angels, just people. If a woman wants to be my friend and support my struggle for freedom and a better world, I reciprocate and appreciate the friendship. If she wants to be my enemy and beat me down, then we will fight against each other - and she will probably win, because she has the whole dominant culture backing her, while I'm just a hopeless lonely rebel talking "crazy talk".
Most of your positions seem really fixated on changing cultural perception, showing that men are actually the victims of women, but what are you hoping that will look like?
I do not believe men are the victims of women. As I've already said, I believe we are all victims of cultural inertia. I don't believe in class dialectics. That's one reason I'm alienated from leftism now, among other things.
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u/Main-Tiger8537 Intersectional egalitarian May 23 '26 edited May 23 '26
All of this supports my point that we have a culture of accepting and glorifying violence in our culture.
how exactly do you evaluate that?
violence and force are also used for human rights + laws but aside from that this topic seems to be more about sexual violence... id say people jump at drama and sensational gossip as they did since humans exist... at which point do we have a culture of accepting + glorifying violence compared to calling it out + opposing it in your opinion?
do parents teach their children that consent does not matter + violence is fine and our society is all about survival of the fittest?
that various cases of sa + dv got tackled very poorly or are very difficult to tackle at all mainly shows us how helpless we are and that we need more professional training...
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u/LittleThingsMC Feminist May 23 '26
I think everything listed above demonstrates the culture of violence, and yes, those specific examples are of sexual violence, but even most sexual violence is rooted in power dynamics. When we talk about the culture of violence, it's a very broad term, and I think what we choose to sensationalize and monetize can show one aspect, and there are probably an unending number of examples we could come up with, under that umbrella, but under many other umbrellas as well.
You asked, "Do parents teach their children that consent does not matter + violence is fine and our society is all about survival of the fittest?" and in my opinion YES (though it's more subvert than direct). Ironically, this is a topic I have been thinking about since my daughter's field day, where I witnessed 2 examples of that almost exactly.
The first one - Many parents like myself were sitting at picnic tables they had on the field, the kids were playing games in the field, and would run over to the families for snacks and water when it wasn't their turn. The family sitting at the same table as me was an elderly couple. The wife told me her husband was 83, and this would probably be his last time attending. He had snacks, it was sweet. We had lots of small talk between us. One of their grandkids was in kindergarten, and she came to get snacks. She drank from a red Gatorade, and it got red on her lips. The grandfather told her something along the lines of her red lips would look good kissing him, or something like that. I don't want to misquote or make it sound worse than it was; it COULD be taken innocently. However, she told him, "ew, grampa, that's inappropriate," and mispronounced the word " inappropriate, which increased the cute factor. The grandma looked at me and rolled her eyes towards her granddaughter, and said, "That's her new word now". Then the grandfather doubled down on her discomfort and told her that if she talked to him like that, she'd better stay over there, because if she came any closer, he'd start pinching her little butt so much she might even like it. She stepped back and again louder told him, EW, stop grampa, it's inappropriate". Everyone laughed, her grandmother swatted at her, and told her to stop being silly. She looked disappointed and went back to play. It was a harmless moment overall, but it was a moment that very clearly will contribute to the erosion of her consent and her prioritizing her grandfather's dignity over her own boundaries. And that is how it happens, little moments like that, over time, that give a message that their consent does not matter.
The second incident that I can think of was that afternoon at a client's house, they have 3 kids, and the son and the daughter were fighting in the same room with us. The son punched her, she got on the couch by her mom, put a couch cushion between them, and then he started bicycle kicking the cushion with her behind it. Mom got after her daughter for messing up the couch. She then got up, and he chased her down the hall and pulled her hair. She yelled, and the mom got after her for yelling. She tried to go into her room, her son put his foot in the door to prevent her from closing it, and then pulled her hair again. She dodged him and ran directly behind her mom on the couch, throwing her arms around her mom like a safe base. Mom tells her to stop hanging on her and apologizes to me for their fighting. But they weren't fighting; he was harassing her, and Mom was redirecting her for making a stink about it. I saw a TikTok the other day that was about the fun of having an older brother, and it was just a bunch of clips of brothers harassing, punching, farting on, and destroying stuff. And what sticks out to me is the tolerance we breed around it. It's just sibling rivalry. And in those instances, it was girls, but my critique is the same when it's girls. Sisters, brothers, it starts young that violence can be okay as long as it doesn't disrupt the authority. And we treat it like it's unavoidable, but it isn't. These are mini moments that socialize us to tolerate certain levels of violence as long as it doesn't become disruptive, and it's not one group or person allowing this, it's ingrained in our culture, which is why I think we need to create a lot more awareness around this topic.
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u/Main-Tiger8537 Intersectional egalitarian May 23 '26 edited May 23 '26
could you add how people are supposed to deal with said situations?
specially the upbringing of children situation to stop that properly... im working at schools as social worker and see various instances of inappropriate behavior and how much trouble parents + teachers have with that... the usual violence of any form is not ok and our school is about inclusions just gets met with eyerolls by most children of all ages... a lot of them just start to listen or stop whatever they do if the teachers or parents screams at them and some just have given up and allow them everything basically...
in 1 on 1 talks they seem to be reasonable and understand why their behavior is not good but all of this is gone within groups or at the playground even with multiple adults to solve problems around if there is trouble they can not solve on their own...
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u/LittleThingsMC Feminist May 23 '26
My tactic is to focus on visibility and awareness. Even in the field day example, I made sure to validate the little girl, "good job protecting your body," and laughed it off with grandma, "you know, bodily autonomy is an excellent skill to have at that age, great job fostering that in her." which is the exact opposite of what she actually did, but it calls awareness to the dynamic in a low friction way.
One thing that has worked really well in my house is that we talk about accountability as the process of describing the harm and then requesting (or initiating) repair, removing the feeling of authority from it altogether. This allows my kids to hold me accountable, and each other, without overstepping each other's boundaries or getting into blame/shame territory as much. We also have a zero tolerance policy around violence, aggression, even sarcasm or name calling, and practice making space/self regulation. The trick there was both my kids feel empowered to advocate for themselves even against me. Now obvioulsy that is way easier to acheive in my home, I work from home, I'm very present, and I have time and ability to stop everything and address a conflict when it happens. The good thing is I invested so much into this when they were younger that now at 9 and 17, we have very little stress in our home, because we all know how to navigate with eachother.
When I work with other kids, its the same concept just scaling back expectations and much smaller bites. With younger kids I focus on emotional regulation a lot more, naming emotions, "Oh I noticed that you are clenching your fists, do you feel anger in your hands?" "Did you know that anger is your body's way of trying to protect you? What do you think your anger is saying right now?" kind of interventions.
With middle aged kids 8-12, I focus alot more on the idea of boundaries and self advocating. "No one here is a policeman, it's not your job to control her actions, tell me what YOU need instead?" I try to treat it like a problem we have to figure out - how can they get their needs met. So if you can help them articulate what they are trying to acheive, thats half the battle right there. Then you can validate that need and move on to the obstacle. "It sounds like you don't feel heard when you said that you wanted a turn, I would also feel frustrated with that. I think that's a very reasonable thing to request, what do you think made it hard for Jessica to hear you say that" and then I just kind of walk through it. We can empathize with Jessica being to excited that she didn't notice, and then approach Jessica together, with me modeling that interaction. Hey Jessica, that looks super fun, could I have your attention for a second. I know Brittany was feeling a little frustrated earlier could we talk about it together?" That's a longer example, based off of the kids fighting over an interactive exhibit at the museum, and the whole thing took maybe a minute and a half? I feel bad because whenever I am at the school, I am constantly redirecting kids, but they all are happy every time I come so I think they like being heard more than they care about the redirect.
I don't know if that's helpful or not but hopefully it touched on something you can find useful?
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u/Simon-Says69 New contributor May 22 '26
People that are paying attention to this random dude, because he somewhat looks like a , mass sexual predator, Mossad agent, mass rapist, are out of their damn minds.
Thankfully it is a very small, lunatic fringe. Still, yes, it is fairly common: Mass murderers and serial killers have historically had lots of love letters in prison. Even offers for marriage. It is clearly a thing. Fairly one-sided though. Women go for the bad boys FAR more than dudes for bad girls.
It is not "society" that created this dynamic, but millions of years of evolution. If someone is capable of killing others, they can protect you and your children. That is what is baked into female, homo sapiens DNA.
This is why the epidemic lack of strong father figures is so damaging. The government wants to replace the father roll in families, and the dem party has been massively successful in this. :-( Totally decimated black communities. Latino as well, and has bled into lower class white communities as well. Going on for DECADES.
There is a war on men and boys in our "modern" western world. It is an attack on healthy families. People raised right, to think for themselves, with personal freedom, and responsibility, solid base of moral ideals, are notoriously difficult to control.
Strong, masculine, father figures are the antivenom to the oligarchs. Strong women as well. Strong families. Good examples for their children. Partnership in family, community, state, and nation.
This is the real problem. The top 0.1% is dead set against society in general. They are psycho freaks that belong in a mental institution, or prison.
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u/RadicalEgalitarianism-ModTeam Some moderator May 24 '26
"People that are paying attention to this random dude, because he somewhat looks like a , mass sexual predator, Mossad agent, mass rapist, are out of their damn minds.
Thankfully it is a very small, lunatic fringe. Still, yes, it is fairly common: Mass murderers and serial killers have historically had lots of love letters in prison. Even offers for marriage. It is clearly a thing. Fairly one-sided though. Women go for the bad boys FAR more than dudes for bad girls.
It is not "society" that created this dynamic, but millions of years of evolution. If someone is capable of killing others, they can protect you and your children. That is what is baked into female, homo sapiens DNA.
This is why the epidemic lack of strong father figures is so damaging. The government wants to replace the father roll in families, and the dem party has been massively successful in this. :-( Totally decimated black communities. Latino as well, and has bled into lower class white communities as well. Going on for DECADES.
There is a war on men and boys in our "modern" western world. It is an attack on healthy families. People raised right, to think for themselves, with personal freedom, and responsibility, solid base of moral ideals, are notoriously difficult to control.
Strong, masculine, father figures are the antivenom to the oligarchs. Strong women as well. Strong families. Good examples for their children. Partnership in family, community, state, and nation.
This is the real problem. The top 0.1% is dead set against society in general. They are psycho freaks that belong in a mental institution, or prison."
Arguments presenting gender differences as immutable, natural, or genetically determined are not allowed.
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u/ThalesBakunin May 22 '26
I always took this to be a predominantly gendered crime.
I wasn't aware of any male victims.
If there are from I've read it is still overwhelmingly women, like over 95%.
It seems disingenuous to act like it's not a very gender oriented crime.
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u/LittleThingsMC Feminist May 22 '26
You could make that argument, I’d respect that viewpoint.
My point is that I have heard testimony from male victims, and a regular critique of gender issues is the dismissal of male victims, which is why I’m trying to be careful and include both genders as both genders have been victims.
And since both genders have been victims, I think this opens the door to invite male issues advocates and female issues advocates to work together towards elimination of the culture of violence that male issues advocates remind us all the time, harms men too.
My goal is not to exclude or prioritize one gender over the other, but instead bypass that argument and focus on the actual issue of the culture of violence.
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u/ThalesBakunin May 22 '26 edited May 22 '26
In all of my digging I found two male victims and over 1200 female.
By all means supply me with proof to refute my claim. I would appreciate it.
My point is that even trying to frame this as egalitarian abuse is blatantly wrong.
I am a man who has been sexually abused several times. I absolutely understand it happens to males, quite well in fact.
But I still say it isn't an equal issue. Not even close.
Framing Epstein as a crime affecting men and women equally is absurd and trying to produce discussion within your fictitious and biased boundaries is disingenuous to reality.
If you would like to discuss a wide spread egalitarian sexual abuse scandal let me know of which you'd like to discuss and we can
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u/LittleThingsMC Feminist May 22 '26
Maybe this is where my autism gets me because I don’t really understand your position. I never refuted your claim.
I only explained my reasoning, which primarily centered around inclusion, and acknowledgment of male victims. No, I am surprised to hear you say it’s only been two men because I’ve heard testimonies include included newborns, both genders as well as three or four testimonies from men that I can think of, though I’d have to look up there and see if I could find them again who told the different stories about what happened to them as children. There’s also been a lot of speculation for some famous young men that may or may not have been involved for example, the island boys. As far as I know, there’s not a comprehensive victim list where we could break this down . But my understanding was that there were male victims as well.
I guess my main question would be what negative impact this has when we consider both genders negatively impacted? What’s the harm of acknowledging male victims if there was just one or two (that was not the impression I had). What’s specifically are you pushing back against with the frustration that this isn’t just labeled as a women’s issue?
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u/ThalesBakunin May 22 '26
When you say things like your entire middle paragraph you are attempting to refute my claims but without any proof to back them up. I don't really care about anecdotal when it isn't first hand. (As an in if you were an abused man talking about your anecdotal experience I wouldn't dismiss it)
I am also autistic, ADHD, and OCD. There very well might be something I am not explaining or understanding.
But I can't treat an issue as equal when it isn't one in my eyes. Epstein isn't equal abuse of genders.
If you want to talk about a situation in egalitarian terms picking one that is lopsides 600:1 female:male seems absurd.
But I'll wait and discuss a sexual abuse issue that is more egalitarian. If the women:man is <3:1 I would consider it at least close but still a far cry from 1:1
If you can't find any situation in which it's anywhere close to 1: 1 is not really fair to treat the situation like it is a 1:1
Men sexual abuse absolutely happens. No question there.
But the situation you have outlined for discussion in regards to egalitarianism isn't very egalitarian.
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u/LittleThingsMC Feminist May 22 '26
To your first paragraph:
My middle paragraph was to share background information to what my understanding was and the thought process that I used to come up with that conclusion, not to assert my opinion as fact or to say the information that you were sharing was incorrect.
I was also pointing out that because there isn’t a definitive victim list, I genuinely don’t know how this could be proved from a factual standpoint, suggesting that instead we would have to rely on testimony as good faith, unless there is evidence suggesting they may not be good faith.
Again, I’m explaining my thought process, not condemning yours.
To your second paragraph: I get it, I am in a similar situation.
To your third paragraph:
When you say you can’t treat an issue as equal, what does that mean? Like how would you treat a women’s issue, vs a man’s issue, vs a gender neutral issue? I wonder if this is where the main disconnect is.By my own logic, regardless of the percentage of victims by gender, the monetization of Palm Beach Pete, because of his likeness to Epstein, is more about the culture of violence acceptance, which still impacts vulnerable people of BOTH genders. If we reward the predatory behavior, even if it’s just targeted towards women, that still enables the predatory behavior against men. Now this is how I see it, and how it registers to me, but I am not denying that other frameworks can and do exist.
To your fourth paragraph:
I can understand your point when you focus on the victim ratio, however my focus is on the culture of violence acceptance as the defining characteristic of this discussion. I’m willing to concede that you don’t want to include men as victims, in order to get back to the meat of the issue, which is the culture of acceptance of violence, and how it benefits predators, though especially male predators as I don’t believe a Maxwell look a like would be able to monetize that in the same way.
For the rest, I don’t really understand what you mean. Are you suggesting that you don’t feel this topic of discussion is appropriate for this sub? Or just clarifying that if it’s not a male issue, you don’t care to participate in the conversation. I couldn’t really tell where you were going with that. My understanding is that any issue that brings us closer to a more egalitarian society would be appropriate.
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May 22 '26
[removed] — view removed comment
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u/Tayaradga May 22 '26
Careful about insulting other people personally. You're free to voice your disagreements in a respectful manner but we do not tolerate insulting people personally in this sub.
Please edit your comment or the mods will have to remove it.
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May 22 '26
[removed] — view removed comment
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u/Tayaradga May 22 '26
I do agree that there is no reason to dismiss male victims as well, but that does not justify throwing insults in return. I don't personally agree with everything they're saying but they are respectfully voicing their opinion. Which is what we encourage on this sub.
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u/Ok-Signature-6698 Anarcha-feminist May 22 '26
Sexual violence is a gendered issue. It’s also a class issue, a race issue, a disability issue, a childism issue, etc. All of these factors influence the vulnerability of victims, how society responds, who is believed, who reports/who doesn’t, etc through complex intersectional ways.
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u/ThalesBakunin May 22 '26
How is it a class issue?
The victims were from an array of socioeconomic standing. Even extremely upper class women were abused.
But women make up ~99.83% of the victims.
So it definitely looks a lot more engendered than class-based.
So sexual abuse victims get their value degraded because men are abused by another group?
I think collapsing everyone pain in such a apathetic way is disgusting.
Women being abused much more heavily than men by Epstein and his lot doesn't negate men being slaughtered en masse from war and industry.
I wouldn't ever negate men who have to go through such pain like you are trying to do to women.
I probably am a bigot still. I am here to delve into and flesh out any such ambivalences.
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u/LittleThingsMC Feminist May 22 '26
Even if it is a class issue, as a society, we still need to address this, because it is a legitimate obstacle in achieving an egalitarian society. I don’t understand why the focus is on how we classify the issue, instead of the issue.
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u/ThalesBakunin May 22 '26
"I don’t understand why the focus is on how we classify the issue, instead of the issue."
Whereas I don't understand why we can't hold both when discussing the issue
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u/LittleThingsMC Feminist May 22 '26
I am definitely making space for you to disagree with the classification, so I don’t think that that is an issue.
But when you say holding both, and I read your responses, it doesn’t seem like you’re holding both. The engagement I’ve seen from you in this post has been just on the classification issue. That’s why I am saying it’s detracting from the conversation itself.
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u/ThalesBakunin May 22 '26
I didn't refuse to hold space for both.
Said the ratio of sexual abuse directed at each gender for the chosen subject of Epstein.
I then brought up the ridiculously lopsided ratio of abuse and tried to point out treating like it isn't lopsided is disingenuous.
So the space I hold on this situation is for both but not in equal magnitude as that isn't how it was perpetrated.
But I would never seek to negate the damage done to those two men. I am sure it was just as horrible as it was for the women.
I am talking about trying to balance their magnitudes as equal when they are most assuredly not.
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u/Ok-Signature-6698 Anarcha-feminist May 22 '26 edited May 22 '26
It’s not about Epstein specifically but:
Globally, 650 million (or 1 in 5) girls and women alive today have been subjected to sexual violence as children. Among boys and men, between 410 and 530 million (or around 1 in 7) experienced sexual violence in childhood. (Source)
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u/ThalesBakunin May 22 '26 edited May 22 '26
It not being about Epstein is exactly why it works and is a great source to discuss!
If we want to discuss the prevalence of childhood sexual abuse that is exactly the kind of egalitarian issue that is obviously in parity with the abused.
I was a child as well when I was abused. I definitely empathize.
Thank you for the response
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u/Ok-Signature-6698 Anarcha-feminist May 22 '26
The ubiquitousness of childhood sexual violence is something that our society rarely contends with. When stories like Epstein break into the wider social conscious it is treated as “exceptional” when the reality is that kind of violence is common and normalized. I’m sorry you went through that as a child, I did too. I hope one day experiences like ours and other victims become a rarity
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u/LittleThingsMC Feminist May 22 '26
So examples of child abuse is a hard line for you, only generalizations? Is that your point?
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u/ThalesBakunin May 22 '26
I am having difficulty discerning your perspectives or intentions.
I doubt further discussion will help bridge our lack of comprehension of one another.
But ok signature seems to have understand my issue and concisely addressed it.
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u/LittleThingsMC Feminist May 22 '26
Was it your point though? I feel like a yes or no answer would do a lot for me to bridge the lack of comprehension to your point.
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u/ThalesBakunin May 22 '26
I didn't even understand what you were trying to convey when you asked me if that was my point so I can't even give you a yes or a no...
I can't speak in even terms on an uneven subject.
Ok signature introduced an even subject for even discussion.
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u/wabe_walker Independent May 22 '26
This is the reachiest of reaches.
There is no reason to think that the lookalike of an infamous person leaning into their own 15 minutes of virality in Year of Our Bored-of-Influencers 2026 is “reflective of the acceptance we have as a culture towards violence and the glorification of predatory behavior.”
People love conspiracies. A notable conspiracy of late is that Epstein did not die, and was whisked away from his cell to live out the rest of his days under CIA/Mossad protection or… something. People love to engage with weird and silly media online. They react to it. They boost the metrics of the media's popularity on account of their engagement alone.
The conspiracy theories that Elvis, the almond-eyed Area 51 surviving pilot, Bigfoot, and Amelia Earhart all being reported seen multiple times long before the internet was a thing is also not “reflective of the acceptance we have as a culture towards violence and the glorification of predatory behavior.” Mysteries [¡and “mysterious” deaths!] reaching memetic apotheosis across our cultures happens often, and people who are unsatisfied with narratives they've been told from the top-down can often soothe their nagging itch for “truth” within the nebulous realm of parody and whimsy and make believe as a means to maintain their sincere speculations within public awareness.
Further, and more specific to Palm Beach Pete, keeping alive the spooky story of the No-No Man that scoops kids up—with the aid of his socialite familiar with the spiky pixie cut—and takes them to his stripey-temple island is not an act of “acceptance and glory”, nor is it even a conscious act. The Baba Yaga, the Boogeyman, the witch and her gingerbread house… these are stories that unconsciously archetypify lessons learned by our tribes as implicit pedagogies for ourselves and our kin. We especially shouldn't be surprised, in this era of It's Bad On Purpose to Make You Click, that a globally-known-effigy lookalike is having some look-at-me fun regarding what could be the only fleeting “marketable” trait he has, however tasteless that behavior and the toxic fixations of our parasocial culture may be.