"Why It’s So Hard for Men to See Misogyny"

"When women took to Twitter to share their own everyday experiences with men who had reduced them to sexual conquests and threatened them with violence for failing to comply—filing their anecdotes under the hashtag #YesAllWomen—some men joined in to express surprise at these revelations, which amassed more quickly than observers could digest. How can some men manage to appear polite, kind, even “wonderful” in public while perpetuating sexism under the radar of other men’s notice? And how could this dynamic be so obvious to so many women, yet completely foreign to the men in their lives?...

misogyny hides in plain sight, and not just because most men are oblivious to the problem or callous toward its impact. Men who objectify and threaten women often strategically obscure their actions from other men, taking care to harass women when other men aren’t around...

even when men are afforded a front seat to harassment, they don’t always have the correct vantage point for recognizing the subtlety of its operation... Women who have experienced this can recognize that placating these men is a rational choice, a form of self-defense to protect against setting off an aggressor. But to male bystanders, it often looks like a warm welcome, and that helps to shift blame in the public eye from the harasser and onto his target, who’s failed to respond with the type of masculine bravado that men more easily recognize."

http://www.slate.com/articles/double_x/doublex/2014/05/_yesallwomen_in_the_wake_of_elliot_rodger_why_it_s_so_hard_for_men_to_recognize.html?wpsrc=upworthy

This is old but still very relevant, very all the time. 

I will never forget the time that I was hanging out with a female friend and two male friends at a party, and we noticed a mutual acquaintance (male) interacting with a young woman a few feet away. My female friend and I turned to each other and rolled our eyes because she was clearly completely uninterested in him and trying to walk away, and then we heard our male friends approvingly observing that the guy was totally going to have sex tonight. Like we were seeing two completely different interactions. My female friend and I explained what was actually happening, and a few seconds later the woman walked away. And I was a little traumatized, thinking about times that I might have come off as super interested.

I can only guess that men have an idea that women will scowl and be rude if they aren't interested, and it just occurs to me now that this expectation might be why I have so many male friends with huge egos (sorry if you're reading this, but you all know this about yourself, and I put up with you despite it <3) - like, maybe they live in worlds where they have never been rejected, and women are always being really nice to them. 

It really does feel dangerous to be openly negative towards men - because men will (a) often fail to respond to negativity by going away or whatever, and (b) will return that negativity. In my experience, randos on the street can start saying/doing worse things, people at parties or whatever wilł look surprised and confused and act super offended as though you have just been the worst human ever. But kind of the worst is when you are expressing your lack of desire to continue to interact and the other person laughs or patronizes that negative expression, like you are a child and can't know your own feelings. And so it's much easier to pretend not to notice or just smile until they go away.

And in these situations, no one is really there to come back you up - it's really strongly accepted in our society that men are going to be imposing themselves on women and women are going to be passively gate-keeping. So, if you start something as a woman, bystanders will bystand and you are going to have to finish it yourself.