Not all men….

I haven’t written anything on here for quite some time, I’ve been staying off social media and generally trying to come to terms with the stuff I deal with in EMDR and just generally trying to get on with life. But I feel I need to get this off my chest! So excuse me for the probable rant but…

In February my brother signed me up to a sponsored event for Samaritans 310,000 steps in March.. I agreed to it because I was spending more and more time in bed and barely getting out and it’s worked absolute wonders I haven’t spent a single full day in bed this month and next week I’m attempting to go back to work full time.

So I’ve stayed off Facebook and things but I was struggling for motivation this week I couldn’t be bothered to go out walking so I signed back into Facebook and went on the Samaritans support group. A woman had posted saying she was needing a bit of motivation because she doesn’t feel safe enough walking alone and is doing her steps at home, straight away the “not all men” “Men are scared too” brigade popped up.. completely dismissing this woman’s feelings and turning it into a competition and pardon my French here but please… fuck off!!!

Men aren’t safe walking alone too… seriously?? I assume for some men that’s true of course it is but men are in no way as vunerable as alone women. Also a friend pointed out how many men aren’t safe walking in the street alone because of women?! How many men have to ask their friends to get rid of an annoying male who won’t leave them
Alone? How many men have to make sure they aren’t showing too much skin? Getting too drunk? Not walk alone when it’s dark… how many men get victim blamed when something happens to them? You know like well what was he wearing? What was he doing down there? Oh well he was smashed etc etc etc I could go on. That’s before I even start about conviction rates for male against female crime. I deeply extend my empathy to ANYONE who feels afraid but for blokes to put stuff about something they know naff all about is winding me up. Of course men are attacked, and of course most men are decent human beings but putting things like that comes from a place of male privilege and minimising all of what I’ve said above is not on.

It’s like the BLM argument all over again… if you are an all lives matter person then you are speaking from a position of privilege and you are part of the issue. During the BLM campaign I sat down and looked at my behaviour and some of the stuff I did, said and joked about wasn’t right but I didn’t realise it until this point and when I realised I stopped immediately, I’m not talking about being an outright racist, I’m not in the slightest, but I have two best friends of mixed race and making little wise cracks at them or laughing at them for getting offended because it’s just a bit of jest, it’s not jest and it’s not funny.

Men however don’t seem to grasp there’s any issue with the way they behave, they jump straight on the defensive.. as a girl I was brought up so differently to my brothers, I wasn’t allowed to stay over at male friends houses, hang around with males on my own and my dad would have a fit if I wore anything above my shin! He would tell me it’s because he knew what boys were like at that age and I was taught to modify my behaviour to excuse the behaviour of a male. It shouldn’t be that way! That is male privilege and it’s passing the buck for their behaviour.

I just wish for once that instead of blaming someone else or crying that it’s not all of a group and that that group are just as persecuted.. I wish some responsibility would be taken and people would take note and think well actually that’s not right because that is the only way things will change.